Contented sigh. That's how I felt when I turned the last page of Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home last week. How is it that I don't bat an eyelash hefting around a nearly 1,000 page book like this one, but there are others that simply defeat me? I read Coming Home at least ten years ago and had only the vaguest of recollections of it when I set out picking favorite comfort reads this summer to revisit. Coming Home ranks amongst the best. It's a completely absorbing coming of age tale set against the backdrop of World War II. And whilst this would probably be considered "women's fiction" (whatever that means), I assure you it is a well written, carefully plotted page turner. Somehow I feel like saying all that works against the book, but it's not meant to. I loved this book--for me it just fit a need so perfectly, which sometimes only a book like this will do.
I think Pilcher wrote what she knew as the period details seem so exact, more than simply doing a bit of research--dropping a name here or a place there. Pilcher was born in 1924 in Cornwall and began writing at the age of 7, retiring from it in 2000. During the war she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens), all of which comes up in the novel. It's very much steeped in the culture of the period down to the food the characters ate, the way they traveled, the music they listened to and the clothes they wore. I have a feeling she experienced it all herself. And since Cornwall is one of my dream destinations the fact that so much of it is set so close to the seaside made it only more pleasurable to read as she describes the country so painstakingly.
Coming Home is very much a sweeping family drama, though the main protagonist, Judith Dunbar, is separated from her family for much of the novel. Beginning in 1935 when Judith's mother and much younger sister are about to make their way out to Singapore to join their father who works for a shipping company, the story chronicles the next decade of her life through the turbulent war years. I get the feeling it wasn't uncommon for a child of school age to be educated in England when the rest of the family were living abroad, so at fourteen Judith becomes a boarder at an all-girl's school. Not entirely alone Judith does have two aunts in Cornwall and Devon, but it's the Carey-Lewis family that will take her into their fold. Judith meets Loveday Carey-Lewis at school and the two instantly become best friends. The Carey-Lewis clan is large--between their own children and those friends who travel in their orbit. Unlike Judith's own family who are only comfortably settled, the Carey-Lewises live privileged lives on a lovely estate close to the seaside. Despite that they are never snobbish and take in Judith as one of the family.
The novel is basically split into two sections, Judith's life at school and the summers in between and the war years when she must grow up quickly and do her part for the war effort. Because Pilcher covers so much ground you really get to know the characters well, particularly Judith, as well you feel the passage of time and the effects of the war. She starts out as a gawky schoolgirl all alone but grows into a sophisticated and capable young woman. She falls in love with the Carey-Lewis family and in particular with their charmed son, Edward, but will find she needs to stand on her own to become truly independent. But with the war the various characters are thrown to the wind as each uncertain year passes by changing the world irrevocably. Gone are the glamorous Thirties filled with dreams and elegance, but Judith will come into her own during the war despite its many hardships.
Reading such a sprawling story is really an investment of time and effort and at the end I very much felt a satisfying payback. I've barely touched on the tip of the iceberg, but so much happens in the novel, it's impossible to cover it in any meaningful way here. Suffice it to say, this was an excellent read, one I might very well revisit yet again after it's once more faded a bit from memory. Classify this one as a comfy armchair of a book, one you can easily and contentedly sink into.